Just wanted to give big thanks for all of the effort you've put into your blog, Enzzo! I'm enjoying reading the entries and watching the videos - so informative! Your blog will serve as a valuable resource to me as I continue my pet battling adventures in Pandaria!

I've bookmarked your site and refer to it often - really nicely put together, so thanks for the effort you've put into this.

Anyway, as they say "many roads lead to Rome" and I'm curious what you think of my Nishi strategy.

I use a stoned sea pony to solo all of it, leaving two pets for speed levelling. Sea pony is slower than the flower, and uses Cleansing Rain to counter the sunshine effect, which also heals the team. Tidal Wave to take out the 2 backrow pets. By the time they're down, the flower usually has between 500 and 1000 life left, which Pump easily takes care of.

Waflob wrote:I use a stoned sea pony to solo all of it, leaving two pets for speed levelling. Sea pony is slower than the flower, and uses Cleansing Rain to counter the sunshine effect, which also heals the team. Tidal Wave to take out the 2 backrow pets. By the time they're down, the flower usually has between 500 and 1000 life left, which Pump easily takes care of.

I use a similar strategy with my Purple Puffer, though I flat-out just pump everything to death, including the last guy.However, over time, I've found it's less efficient to use Nishi as a double-leveler than to just use her as a normal single.But that's just me.

Gendou wrote:I use a similar strategy with my Purple Puffer, though I flat-out just pump everything to death, including the last guy.However, over time, I've found it's less efficient to use Nishi as a double-leveler than to just use her as a normal single.But that's just me.

I agree. You don't juice out any extra experience that way; you just split the 4k-or-so among 2 pets instead of giving it to a single pet. However, if you prefer to split the experience, that's just great, especially if you're trying to get 2 pets that last level from 24 to 25. I tried this today, and each one gets about 1300 experience if you have your Safari Hat on.

But yeah, Nishi's a pretty easy tamer, so there are a lot of different ways to beat her. I wonder if they'll allow Siren to use Solar Beam in the upcoming patch? That'd make her a lot more challenging.

Enzzo wrote:Patch 5.2 Drops TodayAs I previously mentioned, Patch 5.2, which goes out on live servers today, brings some serious nerfs to Fluxfire Feline, and the Reflection->Deflection nerf impacts Flayer Youngling, another favorite of mine. However, between the time I wrote that and now, they also decided to nerf Anubisath Idol in the following way:

What does this mean for us? Unfortunately, now you can no longer have Sandstorm and Stoneskin at the same time. This will impact Anubisath’s usefulness somewhat, though it won’t be as devastating to him as the Wind-Up nerf will be to Fluxfire Feline. I believe Anubisath Idol will still be a very valuable pet; though he will probably no longer be able to solo any high-end tamers.

Again, this bad news is tempered with a little bit of good news:

Master Trainers in Northrend, Cataclysm, and Courageous Yon will no longer field pets with higher than intended stats.

While Courageous Yon isn’t that much of a threat, this is great news, as it means that Major Payne will be less of a… well, major pain. In the rear. I’ll work on formulating a good strategy for him in the next few days.

Lil’ Ragnaros is also receiving a nerf in the form of a Conflagrate damage reduction:

Conflagrate’s base damage has been increased by 20% and its bonus damage has been reduced by 60%.

Keep in mind that the “bonus damage” was doubling the base damage. If my math is correct, this is something like a 30-40% nerf overall to the damage of Conflagrate (when the opponent is Burning).

I know a lot of tamers have been looking forward to this quality-of-life enhancement:

Battle Pet Bandages now stack to 25 and are Bind to Account.

Of course, the biggest news of the patch is the new quest and pets they’re adding:

A number of new pets can be found on the Isle of Lightning, including rare spawn drops, wild pets, and raid boss drops.

Elite Battle Pets have been added to the game world. These rare pets will spawn alone against an entire team. The Beasts of Fable taming quest will now become available from Gentle San or Sara Finkleswitch once Aki the Chosen has been defeated. Defeating all of the fabled beasts will award the new Red Panda pet, while completing the associated daily quest has a chance to award the rare brown, white, and orange variants.

I know I can’t wait to get out there and start collecting And I’ll post strategies for the new Elites as soon as I can!